While skimming the organized denial cesspool that is RealClearEnergy, we came across a name and organization that were new to us, Benjamin Dierker of the Alliance for Innovation and Infrastructure. The op-ed, like most at RCE, was an amalgam of pro-gas and pro-pipeline talking points, citing API and the Chamber of Commerce, for example, to claim gas is somehow “the answer for the poor and those hoping to escape poverty.”
Lacking a more seasoned liars' subtlety, we got curious about Dierker and his organization. Was the vague-sounding Alliance for Innovation and Infrastructure a misguided outfit of well-meaning engineers and infrastructure experts? Or just another front for the oil and gas industry hiding behind glossy stock photos? That the piece appeared in RealClear gave us reason to suspect the latter, and we started poking around the organization’s website.
At first, it looks inoffensive, as bland and glossy as any public-facing organization would be, complete with language that contains as much helpful and descriptive information about the organization as there is pulp in an orange soda.
Looking at both the team at Aii, and its Advisory Council, is to behold a page full of headshots that give off major “actually, all lives matter” vibes. But it’s clearly a merit-based workplace that believes in advancing early-stage employees’ careers, because in 2015, Benjamin Dierker joined Aii as a public policy intern. Now he’s the Acting Executive Director and Director of Public Policy.
With incredibly deft and current talking points like “the bridge of natural gas is ready” in the year 2021 coming from Dierker, it’s clear he’s got what it takes to do industry PR. But Acting Executive Director? That seems like quite a jump for the relatively young man, which might make one wonder what happened with Aii’s founder and former chairman Brigham McCown. While he’s still on the Board of Directors, his bio doesn’t say why he’s no longer chairman. But the very last sentence does say that he’s also the chief executive of the Trans Alaska Pipeline System. Ahh. Well. Hmm.
Firing up the old google machine, we found that in 2017, Aii sent then-chairman Brigham McCown to Louisiana for a permit hearing so he could speak in support of Energy Transfer Partners’ Bayou Bridge pipeline, deploying the tired industry talking point that the obviously local resistance to the pipeline was actually an out-of-state-conspiracy. (The Alliance for Innovation and Infrastructure is headquartered in Arlington, Virginia.)
So it’s a vaguely-named organization with unusual succession practices formerly run by a current oil pipeline executive, and currently delivering pro-pipeline propaganda in a key outlet in the Koch et al. organized denial network.
We haven’t seen the 990’s confirming their donation from Donors Trust or the Mercers or Koch Foundation yet. We also haven’t bothered to look, because sometimes actions speak louder than financial disclosure statements.
The most compelling indication that Aii is just a mouthpiece for industry and polluters, the undeniable mark of their denial, is that among the sixteen men on the team page, as of Feb 11, 2021, there is a single woman on their Board of Directors: Mandy Gunasekara.
For those who don’t recognize the name, Gunasekara’s credentials are impressive ... in that while most Trump administration appointees either came from polluter-subsidized nonprofit organizations before serving, or went to work at one afterwards, Mandy managed to do both!
After working for legendary polluter protector Sen. James Inhofe (she handed him that snowball!) and then for Inhofe’s fellow Oklahoma polluter protector Scott Pruitt at the EPA as a chief attorney, she took the revolving door out of the agency to set up the Energy 45 Fund as a dark money mouthpiece for the Trump administration’s dirty energy policies, signed up a bunch of dirty energy clients and did a rightwing-media blitz, then a year later went back in to serve as Chief of Staff for former coal lobbyist (and fellow former Inhofe staffer) turned Trump EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler. Now she’s at Aii.
… it’s a good thing the Trump admin kept that revolving door well-oiled!
